To evaluate the history of the Federal Reserve System, we cannot help but wonder, whither the Fed? and to consider wherefore its reform—even what and how to do it. But first let us remember whence we came one century ago.

The End of the Classical Gold Standard

No one knew better than Jacques Rueff, a soldier of France and a famous central banker, that World War I had brought to an end the preeminence of the classical European states system and its monetary regime—the classical gold standard. World War I had decimated the flower of European youth; it had destroyed the European continent’s industrial primacy. No less ominously, the historic monetary standard of commercial civilization had collapsed into the ruins occasioned by the Great War. The international gold standard—the gyroscope of the Industrial Revolution, the common currency of the world trading system, the guarantor of more than 100 years of a stable monetary system, the balance wheel of unprecedented economic growth—was brushed aside by the belligerents. Into the breach marched unrestrained central bank credit expansion, the express government purpose of which was to finance the colossal budget deficits occasioned by war and its aftermath.

The Rise of Discretionary Central Banking

With the benefit of hindsight we can see that quantitative easing (QE) was actually inaugurated with World War I. We can see also that discretionary central banking in the United States coincided with the founding of the Federal Reserve System. After the banking panic of 1907, the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was designed to provide “an elastic currency” but also to reinforce the international gold standard. Thus, Federal Reserve sponsorship of floating exchange rates in 1971 would become one of the great ironies of American monetary history.

To interpret the financial events associated with the Great War and their effect on the ensuing 100 years, my colleague John Mueller and I have highlighted two crucial events of 1913. First, of course, was the establishment of the Federal Reserve System, and second, the publication by the young John Maynard Keynes of his book, Indian Currency and Finance. The inauguration of the Federal Reserve and the intellectual foundation provided by the monetary ideas of Keynes, taken together, soon gave rise to a perfect intellectual and financial storm—a storm which would last a century.

Lately we have been engulfed by headlines reporting financial turmoil on every continent, in almost every nation, large and small. The commissars of central planning who so marred the history of the 20th century have been replaced by central banks in the 21st. In Cyprus, the new leadership now dares to confiscate citizens’ wealth with a one-time tax of up to 60 percent on bank deposits above 100,000 euros. Self-interested prime ministers blame continental monetary policies for instigating the currency wars that they themselves surreptitiously carry on.

Central banks worldwide, led by the U.S. Federal Reserve, mint new money ceaselessly to bail out insolvent governments, insolvent banks, and insolvent but politically powerful corporations and labor unions. This new money goes first to insiders in the financial sector, who exchange the cheap credit for commodities, stocks, and real estate at ever-rising prices. This is the so-called carry-trade, monopolized by a financial class that uses free money from the Fed to front-run the authorities for insider profits.

From the beginning of the American republic until not long ago, dollars could be exchanged for gold at a parity established by congressional statute (1792–1971, but from 1934–1973 convertible by foreigners alone). Currency convertibility to gold, enforced by law, established a finite limit to the money supply. Inflation—caused by the issue of excess money and credit—would lead citizens to promptly cash out for gold, thus reducing the money supply and ending the rise in prices. In a sense, the system was self-regulating.

With an unlimited money supply, the insolvency of national banking institutions has become an endemic global problem. Depositors are at risk of loss or arbitrary confiscation by panicked political authorities, as in Cyprus. Taxpayers are involuntarily dragooned in to bail out the banking system, as at the start of America’s recession. And if the central bank credit bubble collapses, systemic deflation will be the profound and destructive consequence.